Half Marathon

So I finally did it!!!

I told a few girlfriends that this year I wanted to run a 10K.  One of the girls held me to it, and I ran my first 10K (6.2 miles) at the end of June (on a day that broke a heat record, no less).  Right when I began training, I also joined a calorie counting site with some other girls, so I was working on losing some weight and exercising (tons of fun, right?).  In that first 7 weeks where I trained, I lost 6 pounds.  And I ran the race and was happy. 

But I still wanted to lose some weight...and I figured I had almost gotten to the halfway mark of a half marathon (which is 13.1 miles)...so I decided to go ahead and sign up for it.  My friend Elizabeth was planning to run with me, so I went ahead and signed up. 

Over the next 12 weeks I trained more...and lost another 10 pounds. :)  Yay!  Elizabeth had to stop running with me which kind of freaked me out but I ended up doing fine on the long runs on my own...kind of surprised myself.  I got up 4 mornings a week before 6 to run.  I didn't love it by any stretch of the imagination but I didn't totally hate it either.  I had to rearrange my life routine...since we had kids we have tended to stay up later..but getting up that early meant I started going to bed early (like 10:30). 

The last few weeks have been rough.  I was running 4 or 5 miles 3 times a week on the weekdays, plus 10 or more on the weekends...it was a lot.  I was tired. But I knew I was almost done!!!

So on Sunday in the cold I got all dressed up and headed out to the Mo' Cowbell Half Marathon.  It was only probably 37 when the race started!  It was a nice race...I chose it because it was earlier in the year so shorter time to train and (I hoped) not as cold.  Also it was a smaller race than a lot of the other ones in the next few weeks (only 2500 racers) and it was a relatively flat course.   

The race went really well!  I couldn't easily access my phone with my timer on it (and I don't have a fancy GPS watch or phone holder or anything) so I didn't know how much time had passed until I passed the time clocks.  And I missed most of the mile markers (I guess I was just zoned out?) so I would come up to a  water station and try to figure out what mile I was at.  I think that made it easier because I was really just kind of going blindly but knew (by songs on my iPod) that I was running at my normal pace.  And there was only one major hill on the course and it didn't seem that bad...in fact, I got to the end and tried to remember the course map in my head...I thought that surely that coudn't have been "the hill"?  My time ended up being 2:16:53, which was a 10:27 mile pace...a bit under what I had trained at (I trained at more like 10:40).  I was in the top half (barely) of all the women racers.  I was more than happy with it. 

Nate brought the boys in the freezing cold with their cowbells (I pretty much forced him to, but he gladly did).  They saw me at 2 points, which was fun for me.  Pretty boring for them, but I was glad to see their faces, and glad to show the boys how important it is to support their mama!!!

Not sure of my plan now.  I think I will sign up for another 10K on Thanksgiving.  I don't want to stop running entirely, now that I have trained so long.  But I don't really know if I want to put all the time, and more importantly, energy into a half marathon again.  It was IN-TENSE.  If I don't have a goal then I don't know that I'll keep running, though.  And I know it is good for me, and I don't want to gain that 16 pounds back!  I am now officially at my pre-Z weight, which I haven't been at since pre-Z!

So....we'll see.  In the meantime, I'm pretty proud of myself!  Debating if I want to put the 13.1 cowbell sticker on my car...is that too much?   :)